Welcome To the home of those who love scripture

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2 Cor 6:14-18 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

Apriorian Bibliophiles are people who love the word of God. We are motivated by love of Scripture and never engage in hate. Apriorians believe there is a war between those with faith and those who live in the flesh because there is a hate for the truth. We believe this war is waged on three fronts, the economic, political and ecumenical. 

1. The Trinity embodies the being of God, 
2. The Church embodies the love of God. 
3. The Bible embodies the Wisdom of God.  

• The Bible is the most useful book on the planet
• The Bible is the most reliable book on the planet.
• The Bible is the most provable book on the planet
• The Bible is the most confirmed book on the planet.
• The Bible is the most ethical book on the planet.
• The Bible is the most objective book on the planet.
• The Bible is the most perfect book on the planet.

•  Introduction:

Business Statements are the foundational documents of an organization. They define the parameters and beliefs of the organization. A full set of statements includes a Mission Statement, Vision Statement, Belief Statement, Purpose Statement, Values Statement and the Business Statement.

Mission Statement:

A mission statement tells us why the business exists and encompasses the scope of the activity that a business will undertake. Knowing why the business exists provides clarity and focus. It explains who we are as a business, what we do as a business and whom we serve.  A Mission Statement defines who are the customers of the business. While it needs to be one sentence long a Mission Statement contains the purpose statement, business statement and the values statement.

•    Apriorian exists to bring man to faith and to teach the sufficiency of faith to overcome the abomination of desolation, which is fear.

Vision Statement:

Organizations should have a statement of what they are trying to do and where they are trying to go. The vision statement is said to paint a picture of the ideal future. It paints a picture of the organization’s contribution to society. While the goal may be unobtainable the vision helps to motivate and give direction to those in the organization. A vision statement tells us what is being built.

• Apriorian forsees a future in which faith abounds, there is no freeloading, parasitism has ended, and social costs no longer are visited on society and future generations, there being no taxes, debt, unemployment, inflation or need for a secular state. 

Purpose Statement:

The purpose Statement clearly states what an organization seeks to accomplish, why the organization exists and what the ultimate result of the organizations work is. Usually done in two phrases, the first is an infinitive that indicates the change to be performed and the second identifies the problem that will be changed.

Apriorian:

• Promotes the sufficiency of faith to a fallen world
• Defeats the fear that permeates all flesh.

Business Statement:

Business Statements give the main methods used by the organization to fulfill its purpose - as given in the purpose statement. Business Statements tell what the organization does to fulfill the goals of the Purpose Statement.

•  Apriorian teaches the sufficiency of faith to a fallen world and coaches the fearful in the exercise of faith, to discourage freeloading and dependency on the works of others.

Values Statement:

The values statement is the document that gives the organization its principles or beliefs. These enable the organizations members to pursue the organizations purpose. Actions are to be consistent with our mission to achieve our vision.

• Apriorian values faith over fear, in communities freed of the impositions of the state, deleveraged and sustainable and equitable, shorn of social costs and social stratification both deemed morally reprehensible and rationally indefensible in a people of faith.

Belief Statement: 

        Apriorian believes in:

• Logic
• Markets
• Church
• Charity
• Morality
• Stewardship
• Individuality
• Specialization
• Technology
• Rationalism
• Sustainability
• Justice
• Science
• The Golden Rule
• The Labor Theory of Value
• The Doctrine of Subsidiarity.
• The Infallibility of Scripture
• The sufficiency of faith
• God

Utilitarianism is a philosophy about usefulness. The premise of Utilitarianism is that an action is good or beneficial if it benefits a majority. The original Utilitarian’s stated this principle as the maximization of utility.

However, this can easily become a tyranny of the majority. At the time Utilitarianism were satisfied to support the principles of democracy. Democracy views the majority of the people as the source of all legitimate authority. The majority however have no greater right to authority than an individual.

The aim of Utilitarianism was to generate happiness for the most people. Authority for the majority seemed as if this would mean happiness for the most people. 

Ones actions determines one’s morality. The more one’s actions suited the majority the more moral they were. Kantian ethics however, considered the intent behind the act.

But does the principle of Utilitarianism justify one person being killed to save 5 people who need organ transplants? The problem with this focus on action is that it makes moral choices an issue of the here and now. It would be right to kill one person to save 19 in the short term but what does this do to our soul and to the fabric of society.

Rule utilitarianism attempted to give utilitarianism a longer perspective suggesting we needed to make rules that gave the most people the most happiness over the long term. But happiness is itself an ephemeral term and how to quantify it becomes problematical considering there are different forms of happiness. The happiness life was not lost is of a different quality than the happiness of being chosen to play the lead in a school play.

Are we to assume missing a person whom one intended to kill, is a moral act, because one missed? Missing the shot made more people happy than having hit what one aimed at but failing to harm someone cannot be considered a moral act? 

There is a logical fact we have to recognize before we can even begin to understand the nature of Utilitarianism. If an action is good there must be the possibility of non-good actions, meaning there needs to be a sharp and definable line between these two kinds of actions. Counting heads is not only a dubious way of determining what is good it is technically impossible in most real world situations. No one is going to be able to determine what would make the most people happy except in the most ridiculously extreme kinds of situations.

Abandoning the concept of intent may appear to simplify the problem but only by increasing the invalidity of whatever solution one might suggest.

Morality is not a theory of hapstance. A bee that stings a sharpshooter’s hand as he shoots causing him to miss his mark is not a moral creature and the sting is not a moral act. The intent is missing. 

Intent requires sentience and unless the consequence is what one intended, talking about good or evil in this context is pointless.

There is also a problem with tying morality to what happens to a majority as if one group of people were more valuable than another. The fortuitousness of being of a like-mind with the mass of people hardly means one is moral. Nazi Germany springs to mind as it so often does when speaking about morality and populism.

If morality is to have meaning it must hold out the possibility of there being the moral individual who stands along among his peers. Otherwise we seem to have condemned Jesus himself to an accusation of immorality. He did not, it seem, in his lifetime make a majority of his peers happy. If we are to think of an example of Utilitarian morality think of Pilate, a traditional utilitarian if ever there was one. It was Pilate who asked the crowd if they would be happier if a known murderer was set free or a man in whom he saw no guile. As a traditional Utilitarian he was able to wash his hands of the affair because the people had spoken. No standing his ground and doing what he knew would have been the right thing. There was no moral individual in his eyes. Morality was relative to the happiness the action produced, regardless of the intent behind the action anticipated.

No Christian can view this trial as anything other than what it was, the greatest travesty of justice ever committed.

For an action or outcome to be seen as being useful we need to comprehend what useful means. It cannot be supposed that we exist just to make others or ourselves happy. There is no way to proof humans deserve happiness or have a right to happiness or even that happiness is a First Order Principle. The biggest mistake made was in trying to link utility with happiness. It was a project doomed to failure.

To be useful an action has to create value. Value is scalable according to the context in which it is created.

Humans can and do create value on the global scale, but a more appropriate scale is the local level, the cell or social network level, the level at which most people function and the level on which most value is created.

Value can be given an economic value. We can ascertain the value of a business or community or nation and determine if the Balance Sheet for that entity has been added to or reduced in value.

The purpose of mankind is to add value to our communities and thus an action has utility and moral value if and when it adds value to the Balance Sheet of a community or group.

Exchanges are a way to ensure accountability exists. Unless we know the specific costs a person or account creates or consumes, we cannot know if an individual is being responsible for the costs he or she creates or not.

We reject state intervention simply because governments actions are not accountable in the way the actions of individuals are.

Citizen Exchanges are organizations fighting to separate church from state using a currency created by the formation of equity. 

The free market is said to be the most powerful social technology available to humankind, yet it has not solved the problem of unemployment, debt or inflation. It still harbors waste. Messianics believes this is because of the type of money being used.

Money is considered to be one of the greatest of human innovations, yet no one knows how to issue currency in the quantity needed without creating debt and inflation. That an issue of money can create economic dislocation is proof the money we use is not Scripturally sound.

The power of the free market is said to be its reliance on the invisible hand. This power is vested in the currency used. The invisible hand of the free market is visible to financiers and the state. These players control the money supply and its velocity and the market itself. This control of the market is euphemistically called making money work for you.

Despite the assurances the market will sort things out on its own it cannot when the money supply is controlled by a small cadre of rich and influential persons. 

If the invisible hand was as powerful as its supporters say, why has it not achieved autonomy from the state and the money managers of the economy?

If the most efficient business is the one without government regulations, why have not governments been made redundant by the operation of efficient private enterprise businesses operating in a free market? 

Regardless of the theoretical assertions it is difficult to imagine capitalism existing without the state. Government is needed, not so much to regulate business, but to restrain those who would tar and feather capitalists and run them out of town on a rail, if permitted. 

Unions were not developed as a way to protect the sanctity of the market. It is difficult to imagine 5000 sturdy workmen taking abuse from a portly entrepreneur based on the assurance the free market produces the best possible outcome.

Private enterprise exists only because the public sector protects it at the public's expense.

Adam Smith noted that businessmen never come together without the conversation turning to methods of circumventing regulations and the market, such impulses are also part of labors makeup and given half a chance any group of workers would over through management without a second thought, were it not for the protective arms of the state.

Citizen Exchanges are formed by citizens who come together to eliminate claims to their property by the state. Citizen Exchanges are composed of between 3 and 15 persons. Any product or service provided by the public sector can be provided by an Exchange. Public goods such as policing, and health care and education can be provided with the same facility conventional goods and services are by the market. 

Exchanges can be set up and registered as a not-for-profit corporation. Registering the Exchange as a not-for-profit will reduce issues that might occur with the state as we carry on increasing the degree of separation between church and state. 

Every member in an Exchange has one voting share. Common Shares allow the member to vote in elections and on policy initiatives and to a share of the assets of the organization were it ever dissolved. However, Exchanges are never sold or liquidated. The assets of an Exchange can be transferred to a different sector, but Exchanges never become non-viable in the way private business do.

Exchanges issue Preferred Shares as a form of voucher-based currency. Preferred Shares represent the equity of the market and are issued based on the accumulated assets of the market. Thus, the currency is always fully backed and never generates inflation. Nor do Exchanges produce or use interest bearing debt nor are Exchanges subject to inflation.

Exchanges are as varied as the goods and services people need. Exchanges are set up and expand by direct transfers of assets.

Capitalist enterprises may claim to be making a profit when in fact liabilities are being externalized. Double entry bookkeeping permits the formation and externalization of liabilities and debt. Perhaps a lawsuit has been levied against the corporation or an employee has information that will bring the company down. The accounting of a business is never accurate in terms of real costs. No company measures the pollution they create or adds this cost to the price of their products. But these are real costs.

Exchanges are self funded. There is more than one way for this to happen, but it generally involves a transfer of assets to the capital account of the investor.

Contributors allocate assets to the Exchange. Payment is by preferred shares being deposited in the investor’s capital account. Equity in the Exchange is exchanged for assets transferred to the Exchange. Equity is a financial vehicle used to express value. A piece of equipment sold to the Exchange for $500.00 represents $500.00 worth of equity.

Equity is represented by preferred shares. An Exchange that receives an asset valued at $500.00 is able to issue 500 preferred shares valued at $1.00 each. These shares become equity belonging to the client. Preferred shares can be exchanged for goods and services because they are issued as denominations in the way conventional currency is. Preferred shares are a fully backed currency and used as a unit of exchange in all economic transactions.

Christians are required to divest themselves of personal wealth and yet they are required to be doers of good works. This includes caring for their families. The only way these parameters can be satisfied is by means of an Exchange. Personal property required for the care of oneself and one’s family is not the issue here. What is on the table is capital or commercial assets. All surplus goods need to be transferred onto the accounts of the Exchange. 

The easiest and best way to divest oneself of excess assets is by transferring ownership of one’s assets to the accounts of an Exchange in return for preferred shares.

There is no benefit for an Exchange to create social costs, that is costs that the market will pay over and above what needed to be paid. The agency creating the cost is the agency that will ultimately pay the costs and to whose account the cost will be recorded.

Exchange inputs equal outputs. If we are taking wealth from the planet, we need to restore this in some way. We must think of a market as an island. Those in one specific Exchange trade with other jurisdictions but the focus is local, meaning the health and integrity of the local market must be paramount.

It makes no sense to create a shoddy product or service when this will be used by a department of the same business. If one department needs a piece of equipment, it makes no sense for the manufacturing arm of the parent company, to produce the machine in such a poor way that the machine does not work as it ought and suffers multiple breakdowns. This holds true for Exchanges. Business activity in and between markets is similar to in-house transfers within a conventional business.

Social costs are what businesses call externalized costs. These are costs created by the production produces but not contained in the price of the products or services sold, thus the uncovered cost accrues to the account of society and future generations. This only makes sense within the context of a social agenda. The formation and pursuance of social agendas is the hallmark of liberalism. Exchanges prevent costs from being externalized onto society and future generations.

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